It’s a Mixed-Up, Muddled-Up, Shook-Up World

Is human nature fixed or malleable? Does life have an underlying order or is it continually in flux? Is the past relevant or is the present and future all we have? Is morality a constant or subject to change? What about truth? And virtue?

All these questions could be boiled down to one simple question: Is the essence of life one of being or becoming?

Antiquity, into which I would place the biblical witness, argues that the secret to human flourishing requires that life align itself with the objective realities of God and/or nature. This means adjusting our lives to the objective, unchanging standards of ‘the good, the true, and the beautiful,’ gleaned perhaps especially through the received wisdom of the past.

Let’s say I’m planning to travel from Cape Cod to Boston. I can either look at a map that’s lines trace the path where others have gone before, or I can set out blindly on my own. Admittedly, I might eventually get there, but I likely will encounter any number of detours and dead ends along the way. And there’s always the chance I may never get there at all.

Hands down, the most basic theme running through both the Old and New Testaments is that the good life is attained by aligning our will with God’s will, not the other way around. Human flourishing means conforming our lives to reality, not reality conforming to us.

Contemporary thinking, in contrast, argues that there’s no set structure to either human nature or the world around us. Instead, life (and history) moves in wholly uncharted ways. There’s no telling where it’ll lead.

With this line of thinking, reality is constantly evolving, ever in flux. There simply are no constants. One life-configuration leads to another, and then another. Life is defined, in effect, by what we make it, by what we humans decide it to be.

Thomas Aquinas, the estimable 13^th century theologian, famously argued that Creation, though not God, reveals something of God. It presents not a mirage or the mere appearance of reality, but reality itself, as the Creator so ordained it. It points to God analogously.

Contemporary Gnostic thought, however, posits that Creation is arbitrary, a fluid phantasm that only appears real. It betrays no concrete objective reality informing or shaping human life. Reality is malleable and freely altered by human knowledge or aspiration. Creation is but the raw material we use to impose our will. The creature creates Creation. And in so doing, the creature becomes God, the very definition of Original Sin.

Notably, social engineering of the type we find in, say, Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel, which eschews the verities of the past and looks only to the future, sees human beings as blank slates to be refashioned by the latest improvements, well-intentioned or not. The stubborn waywardness of human nature is, of course, mostly disregarded.

This means, for example, as I argued in a recent post, that we can dispense with age-old wisdom, along with its intractable rules and obligations regarding human sexuality, without a thought as to how these changes affect actual human beings. Such liberation, as we see, soon leads to subjugation.

There’s a motto inscribed on the courthouse in Worcester, MA which reads: “Obedience to the law is freedom.” To modern ears, this sounds nonsensical. Obedience is in fact the polar opposite of freedom. For obedience breeds conformity, repression, and the loss of Self. How is that in any way liberating?

The ancients, of course, wouldn’t blink at the courthouse maxim. The laws of gravity don’t care whether I believe they exist or not. If I walk off a cliff, even if in my mind I’m convinced I can fly, I will fall. To respect the laws of gravity is to insure my safety and, indeed, to preserve my freedom.

You may have heard about the Dutch man who recently approached the courts to have his age legally reduced from 69 to 49. His logic is that this will improve his life, making him eligible for better jobs, and even affording him greater success at online dating!

Now it’s easy to dismiss this as a one-off bit of lunacy by a lone individual. However, in countless ways, we see similar things happening all around us. People “self-identify” as something they’re not. Life must bend to the wishes of individual desire.

In less obvious ways, contemporary Western culture routinely fosters the ascendant notion that we can define life however we choose, regardless of contrary laws bidden by God and Creation. It’s as if we’ve become adolescents who loudly and defiantly refuse to accept the adult world of limitation and responsibility (the “real world”).

This raises obvious questions. Is life then static? After all, we see change all around us. Is human nature bound purely by natural limits, or can we grow and evolve beyond their narrow confines?

The obvious answer is – you guessed it – yes and no! I have long believed in a kind of “fate with a choice.” That is, I believe God foreordains each of us to play a specific role within creation, one we are free to either accept or reject. This means, at our core, we’re hardwired with certain gifts as part of God’s overall plan for the world.

I can decide to be a great artist. The only problem is I have no talent. I could still pursue it and dedicate my life to it. But that won’t ever make me a real artist.

Fortunately, I have other gifts. I can either make the most of them or I can flail about pursuing life choices entirely unsuited to me (benefiting neither me nor the world around me).

But what about change? What about the Christian doctrine of sanctification, the process of becoming ever more Christ-like? Changes wrought in Christ, however, do not lead me to become someone I’m not. Rather, they beckon me to become more fully the person God created me to be, and not the one I decide I might wish to be.

The goal of life, then, simply put, is to discover and live out the calling God has preordained for us. It’s not a static, unchanging life, but one involving active and dynamic growth that moves us away from a past distorted by sin and toward the higher and holier path set forth in Jesus Christ.

Within the Reformed (re-formed) tradition there is clear recognition of the need for change but also the need to hold fast to that which is unchanging. The map might be redrawn to include new streets and new roads, but the underlying creation upon which they rest remains forever unaltered.